This MSI Raider GE76 12UGS is hands down the most powerful laptop we’ve tested so far. With that, it is also of the heaviest and thickest we’ve got our hands on, if not the most. The model we’re testing is precisely named the MSI Raider GE76 12UGS; Raider GE76 specifies its chassis and 12UGS specifies its configuration, namely its CPU, GPU, and Display.
If you’re looking for a review of any other variant of the Raider GE76, rest assured everything else about the laptop is exactly the same as the other GE76s: the build, the chassis, the keyboard, speakers, touchpad, webcam, internal layout, battery, and WiFi.
Specifications
The GE76 12UGS laptop comes with Intel’s 12th Gen Core i7-12700H CPU, having 14 cores and 20 threads. This is Intel’s second fastest laptop CPU from its latest Alder Lake chipsets, only behind the Core i9-12900HK, which can also be configured in this laptop. The GPU in our model is Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070Ti Laptop GPU, a capable and powerful graphics card but if you’re looking for the extra oomph, you can always configure the Raider GE76 with the GeForce RTX 3080. You get 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, which can be upgraded in the future if need be. Then there’s a 1TB Gen4 m.2 NVME SSD, Duo Wave woofer, a huge 99.9 WHr battery, and 6E WiFi.
The display on this machine is a 17.3-inch 1080p screen with a refresh rate of 360Hz. Considering that the Raider GE76 has a 17.3-inch display, we would have preferred a high resolution of 1440p at the minimum. However, you can always configure this machine to have a display resolution as high as 4K.
Design and Build
The Raider GE76 looks like a mean gaming machine with its extravagant RGB lighting. The LED strip on the bottom corner is what makes this an extravagant treat for the eyes. All this is done without really overdoing it, and that is a good thing because that means that this machine can also suit a corporate environment without screaming “hey look at me with a mean gaming machine.”
The laptop’s grey body color goes well with its overall aesthetics. The laptop is built pretty well. There is minimal flex on the screen and on the keyboard. The laptop weighs a whopping 3 kilograms, and with its 280W power brick, it weighs an additional 1.05 kg.
Be aware of the fact that despite being a 17-inch laptop, this laptop is pretty handy and can be ferried around without any issues as such. It can fit into most backpacks easily. The Raider GE76 has a thickness of just above one inch with the lid closed. While in comparison to most mainstream laptops this might seem high, in its category of gaming mean machines and desktop replacements, the MSI Raider GE76 is slimmer than its peers.
Display
Coming with a 1080p 360Hz screen with such high specs gives us the idea that this laptop is geared towards esports gamers who want absolute performance without dropping frames. We personally would have preferred at least 1440p resolution on a 17.3-inch display. Still, the screen has really good color vibrancy and contrast, and decent brightness to get the job done. The brightness falls just short of 300 nits at the maximum setting and that is a little disappointing for a laptop of this price.
The backlight does bleed a little but that is a thing one can expect from non-OLED displays, but to the benefit of this screen, it is kept to a minimum and never really comes in the way of the experience.
Blazing fast display with a response time of 3.2ms
Monitor overclocking is also readily available for our disposal via the Display Overdrive setting. This setting effectively reduces the screen response time. This setting reassures that this machine is geared towards professional gamers and esports. Enabling this setting gives us a grey-to-grey response time of 3.2 milliseconds, which is really impressive for laptop standards. This is a benefit that will only be enjoyed in the 1080p model. This clearly makes this one of the fastest screens on gaming laptops. Disabling the Overdrive reduces the response time significantly to 6.5 seconds. This proves that this configuration is meant for e-sports since the latency when clicking and the action being performed, like a gunshot, is amongst the lowest I have ever seen.
Ports and Connectivity
MSI hasn’t left any stone unturned when it comes to the selection of ports. You get a wide selection of all if not most ports on this machine.
On the left-hand side, you get a Kensington lock followed by an exhaust outlet, a USB A and USB C port, both of which support USB 3.2 Gen 2, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The right-hand side also has an exhaust, and two USB A ports, but these are slower than the ones on the left side, supporting USB 3.2 Gen 1. You also get an SD card reader.
The rest of the ports are on the back of the laptop, something not common with many laptops. This attribute makes the case for the Raider GE76 being seen as a desktop replacement, and a good mounting hub. Sandwiched between the two exhausts on each side, you get Mini DP 1.4, Type C Thunderbolt 4, 3.5 Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, and power input ports.
The Mini DP and HDMI ports connect directly to the Nvidia graphics card. The USB C port on the left side has display support too. The Type C port on the back however is connected to the integrated graphics, so if Optimus (that’s what they call the MUX switch) is disabled, you cannot use that port. This is due to how Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs and Thunderbolt work. And no, you cannot use the Type C ports to charge your laptop. That would have been a handy feature for those times when you find yourself without the power adapter.
MUX Switch
A good thing about the laptop is that it comes with a ready MUX Switch accessible via the MSI Centre app. This switch is used to cycle between using the GPU discreetly or using a Hybrid mode that switches between the integrated GPU and the dedicated GPU to increase battery life. Toggling the settings does require a restart. So if you need to use the laptop for browsing, productivity tasks, spreadsheets, etc., set the switch to use the Integrated graphics card. This will significantly reduce the power draw by anywhere between 10W to 150W, thereby increasing the battery life. If you do need to game or use GPU-intensive applications, switch to GPU Discreet mode. It’s good that we’re seeing more and more laptops providing a MUX switch as it was always a pain when it wasn’t there, requiring one to enter the BIOS and change the settings each time one had to switch between integrated and discreet GPUs.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is Steelseries branded and supports full RGB with per-key lighting that is fully programmable. Even the brightness of the keys can be adjusted. The keyboard does a great job of preventing color bleeding, which is something that most RGB LED keyboards are plagued with.
How does the keyboard feel when typing? It feels great. I was able to type with any missed keystrokes or double presses. The actuation and resistance of the keys are on the pro-level side. The keys feel soft and plush while still being tactile enough to slam them during an intense gaming session or attempt words-per-minute world records.
The touchpad is a huge step up too. It is precise and fluid, and much better than the touchpads of most machines we have tested. It is quite big in its surface area but since the laptop is super huge, the touchpad looks tiny. Point accuracy is really good but not Macbook-level good. It is not that far behind though, it is actually pretty usable and at times we felt we were better off than using a mouse. Most Windows laptops came with downright terrible touchpads that lacked accuracy, so one would kind of by default always use an external. That problem is eliminated in the Raider GE76. Carrying a mouse isn’t a necessity like it is with most Windows laptops, as you can perform productivity workflows using only the touchpad. And, you get the benefit of using Gestures, which are greatly improved in Windows 11. However, of course, you need a mouse if you’re gaming.
Lackluster Webcam
The laptop comes with a 1080p webcam placed in the middle of the top of the screen. The quality of the webcam feels like it is from the 90s, and the microphone quality isn’t much to talk about either. The webcam doesn’t have infrared so no support for Windows Hello. While the microphone does do a good job of removing unwanted noise, the voice still sounds on the muddier side. This is disappointing as one would expect to get a high-quality camera and microphone at this price.
Unfortunately, we cannot show you the internals of the laptop because we were forbidden to open this bad boy up by the brand.
Wifi 6E
This laptop comes with Wifi 6e and I was expecting a next-gen wifi performance, but it was only decent. Where a Macbook Pro showed full bars connected to a 5G network, the MSI Raider GE76 got only two bars at the same location as the Macbook Pro. However, I witnessed no lag or unnecessary latency during online sessions of Dota 2. I got roughly the same latency as when I get using the Ethernet port, give or take.
Speakers
You get a luxurious number of speakers for a laptop. There are two front-facing speakers on either side of the keyboard, and two speakers on the front side. MSI claims these speakers to have “Duo Wave Woofers.” The speakers performed really well in comparison to other gaming laptop speakers. They were reasonably loud, but they lacked in detail and clarity. For a comparison of the Raider GE76 speakers versus the Macbook Pro 16 speakers, which are the best speakers seen on a laptop yet, check out our YouTube Review of this laptop.
Still, I was able to enjoy Dota 2 and The Witcher 3 on these speakers without the use of headphones, but only because I did not mind the insane fan noise.
Benchmarks
Cinebench
Let’s talk performance now. Cinebench yielded a healthy score of 13272 in Multi-Core and 1702 in Single Core. This is the best performance we’ve recorded so far on any laptop, and it is worth mentioning that we haven’t tested the i9-12900HK yet, which is bound to be faster than the i7-12700H processor. This makes this CPU almost equivalent to the i9-11900K and Ryzen 9 5900HX in multicore and faster in Single core. Those are some serious performance numbers. It is worth mentioning that the multi-core performance takes a hit when we run the test on battery power. However, the single-core performance stays roughly the same.
I just want to say that these are really impressive numbers by Intel’s 12th gen processors. AMD will really have a tough time trying to figure out how to top the performance and efficiency of Intel’s Alder Lake processors.
Crossmark
Crossmark is a benchmarking tool that standardizes the performance of desktops, laptops, and mobile phones by bringing them to a common platform. The benchmark uses common workflows that are consistent across tests on all kinds of platforms and operating systems. This makes it yields a score that can compare the performance of a laptop and a mobile phone together. Crossmark yielded an overall score of 1795, which is again the fastest we’ve ever witnessed. It beats almost everything in the market including the M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs. Now we’re wondering how mind-bogglingly fast the Core i9-12900HK will be.
Gaming Performance
3DMark TimeSpy
Dota 2
Since this laptop is designed primarily with esports and competitive gaming in mind, we ran Dota 2 at maximum settings, 1080p resolution, and uncapped FPS. The MSI Raider GE76 was able to dish out a healthy average of 173 frames per second, with the maximum fps being 239. We were expecting 360 fps but we were just being greedy. That’s a common symptom when we’re facing the latest cutting-edge enthusiast-level hardware.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and DLSS/FSR
The laptop managed a commendable 104 frames per second in Assassins Creed Valhalla with Ultra settings and 1080p resolution. This was when the laptop was connected to the power adapter. We ran the benchmark without being connected to the power outlet and the average fps dropped to 48. This leads us to conclude that there is definitely some throttling going on when you’re on battery power.
Scaling the resolution to the maximum 2x setting gave us an average fps of 46, which is pretty respectable. Throughout all these scenarios the GPU load was 100% while the CPU load never crossed 10%, proving that the GPU is a bottleneck here when it comes to gaming. In that sense, you also get the same laptop with a 3080Ti, which would make more sense if you’re willing to enjoy the 360Hz screen with the latest games.
NVME SSD Performance
The SSD unit is a 1TB NVME m.2 SSD. You get the latest-gen fastest speeds. A 1TB test run on Crystal Disk Mark yielded Read speeds of 3544 MB/s and Write speeds of 3227 MB/s which is as fast as one can get with mainstream enthusiast-level components.
Battery Life
The MSI Raider GE76 is powered by a 4-cell 99.9 Watt-hour battery. They can increase the battery capacity further because 99.9 is the maximum legal battery size allowed on airplanes! With the MUX switch on, you can expect a battery life of about 6 hours while watching YouTube videos. This drops to 3 hours with the MUX switch off. Gaming on battery power is impractical, but you can squeeze in a 90-minute Witcher 3 session from 100% battery. This makes the battery life reasonable for productivity and internet browsing, but you will need to carry the power adaptor if you’re gaming. Also, I think it’s high time gaming laptops start coming with MagSafe-like chargers to prevent the laptop from falling if in case someone trips over it.
Cooling
Now let’s talk about the thermals and temperatures. On idle, the GPU stood at 48 degrees Celsius. Stressing the MSI GE76 with 3DMark TimeSpy gave us a maximum temperature of 78.1 degrees Celsius. Playing Dota 2 with uncapped FPS rose the maximum GPU temperatures to 87.7 degrees Celsius. The CPU temperatures did get me worried at times. During 3DMark’s TimeSpy run the CPU Pcores reached a maximum of 97 degrees. This is in line with the performance of the laptop. When the temperature touches 100 degrees, the CPU and GPU throttle down their frequency. Mind you, you will only reach 100 degrees if the ambient temperature is high or if any of the laptop’s vents are blocked. The fans of the laptop run fast and loud enough to ensure the temperatures are well below 100 degrees.
The laptop does offer various power modes and tends to throttle its CPU frequency when on battery. For best performance, one has to ensure that the laptop is plugged in. Reverse engineering and re-setting up the power settings as per usage is a must to derive maximum efficiency from this machine.
Power Consumption
Coming to the power consumption, on idle the GPU uses 15.5 Watts and the CPU uses just 6.55 Watts. That is very impressive for a 12th gen CPU and Alder Lake, it seems Intel has gone leaps ahead in efficiency and it clearly shows. The story pretty much changes under load. The GPU touched a maximum of 188.5 Watts. That is a huge number and left me a little surprised. The CPU on the other touched a maximum of 86.5 Watts, well within its expectations. It is worth noting that Alder Lake draws lower power per Hertz of clock speed than its predecessors and even AMD’s latest line of CPUs.
In comparison to AMD CPUs from the chart, the Alder Lake is using much less power on idle while having almost double the cores and a higher frequency.
Conclusion
The MSI Raider GE76 12UGS qualifies as a legit desktop replacement machine and a very capable esports and competitive gaming machine. The 12th Gen Core-i7 processor inside this machine offers mind-blowing performance while being efficient and cool. Intel is able to extract this level of performance from 10 nanometer chips, imagine what it can do with its upcoming 9-nanometer chips. Intel has flipped the script on AMD, especially with its Alder Lake mobile CPUs.
This laptop is meant for those who want really high processing power and a fast display in a considerably small form factor. The machine can do much more. It can even act as a hub when docked to a larger monitor with a higher resolution. “Small” is relative though. If seen as a laptop, the MSI Raider GE76 isn’t small at all, it is hefty, heavy, and huge. When looking at the things this laptop can do, one should ideally compare it to desktops, and in that case, this is actually a very small form factor. This laptop feels at home when placed from desk to desk, at home, and at the office. If you’re looking for something truly portable, there are a plethora of options and the Raider GE76 isn’t one.
We would have liked a more powerful GPU than the 3070Ti here because as per our tests, the GPU is a clear bottleneck factor when it comes to gaming performance. We can wholeheartedly say that if one is interested in this chassis, the choice of GPU should be the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 rather than the RTX 3070Ti. The chassis, cooling, and power mechanics are well-suited for the 3080.
This machine checks the right boxes with its great keyboard, vibrant display, industry-beating response times, its beautiful LED strip along with really well-done keyboard RGB lighting. The speakers aren’t bad either, although not the best. The webcam and microphone could have been better too. But still, this machine is a performance behemoth and for those who want this level of performance on the go, you just can’t go wrong here.
The price of the core i7 variant laptop is Rs 2,85,990 and MSI GE76 Raider core i9 variant price: Rs. 4,81,000
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